Clever packaging for solid pourable products, offering improved functionality, appeals to customers. Applicant's specialty boxes with slide openings enable convenient dispensing of contents, and thus provide food manufacturers a competitive advantage. Applicant is the owner of von Stillfried U.S. Pat. No. 5,505,373 for a “Folding Package,” and is the named inventor on numerous issued U.S. patents for specialty packaging including U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,116,499, 6,273,332, 6,360,942, 6,435,402, 6,945,449, 7,040,528, 7,156,286, D551,967 and 7,337,904, as well as U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2008/0128480 for a “Thumb-Actuated Candy Or Mint Box.”
Although for a time Applicant licensed the von Stillfried patent for use on Certs® mints boxes, Applicant's specialty boxes have otherwise yet to be widely distributed. The primary reason has been difficulty in manufacturing Applicant's boxes on a mass production scale. Major food or candy manufacturers have high-speed form, fill and seal packaging machines which produce hundreds of boxes of product per minute. These machines take partially-constructed boxes, fold and seal one end, then fill the boxes, and finally told and seal the opposite end thereby completing the manufacturing.
Early on several of Applicant's box designs with slide openings needed multiple pieces of cardboard to produce, which was disadvantageous. Further. Applicant's boxes have typically required an insertion step or inserting of the slide member in between or adjacent other side panels of the box. This insertion step cannot be easily accomplished by various food or candy manufacturers without significant changes or new high-speed equipment. Therefore given the heavy investment in their hundreds of expensive machines, major manufacturers have been unwilling to adopt Applicant's new box designs, despite the improvements offered in easier dispensing of the pourable food items for customers.
In the “Thumb Activated Candy Or Mint Box” application identified above, Applicant developed a box with a slider from a single sheet of blank stock not requiring the insertion step. The slider moves in a sideways direction perpendicular to the top opening of the box, however, meaning this box differs some from conventional boxes in appearance and operation. Accordingly, Applicant has continued to develop boxes of new and superior functionality which offer improvements over the prior art including in ease of manufacturing and use.
For the foregoing reasons, there remains a need for a box that offers a convenient slide opening for easy dispensing of product, that is easy to manufacture on a mass production scale using conventional high-speed packaging machines, and that is constructed in such a way to avoid any insertion step. There is further a need for a box incorporating a slide opening having the same appearance and handling characteristics as a conventional box, wherein the top flap is lifted to dispense the contents. The improved box should be made from a single sheet of blank stock.
There is also a need for box that incorporates a slide opening as well as incorporating a support for holding the slide against the opening, thus preventing spillage of pourable product from the opening when the slide is closed. Also, there is a need for a box incorporating a slide and a support that can be folded while avoiding any insertion step. Finally, there is a need for a box incorporating a slide and a support, that can also be quickly and fully opened at the top of the box if desired.